Plex hits the big screen with the first official release of its media browsing and playback tool. Plex Home Theater 1.0 is the client-side version of Plex’s media suite for Windows and Mac users, and has been 11 months in the making, during which time 15 separate builds were released exclusively to PlexPass subscribers.

Plex Home Theater replaces Plex Media Center, and gives users access to media stored on a computer running Plex Media Server, both over their local network and -- via the MyPlex web service -- wider internet.

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Using a peripheral to interact with your computer is so passé. Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners have the Kinect to dance in front of, and PlayStation gamers have a camera that can be used in much the same way. PC users can turn to the likes of Leap Motion if they like the idea of eschewing traditional forms of control, and an increasing number of smartphones can recognize eye and hand movements. Now it looks as though Apple is joining the party by buying 3D motion detection specialists PrimeSense.

This may not be a firm that sounds all that familiar, but you're almost certainly aware of the Israeli company's work -- Kinect for the Xbox. Yep, you read that correctly. Apple is buying the firm behind one of the most interesting and innovative features of Microsoft's game console. While no details of the purchase have been revealed, and no mention made of any money that may have swapped hands, PrimeSense has confirmed that the purchase is going ahead.

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December 1998. I started my Internet career at one of the first European e-commerce websites. At the time, we used to call it New Information and Communication Technologies. In 2013, 15 years later, some of these technologies are still seen as "New". But while in some countries seniors are stigmatized just when their experience is at its fullest, we refuse to see technologies age and be fully integrated. Ironic isn’t?!

Fear of technologies that are difficult to master is understandable, but why reject them all? Why not fully embrace them and establish the boundaries of what is understandable and useful as well as personal privacy limitations? These same technologies allow us to voice our opinions directly to those who created them and to provide collaborative feedback so they may be continually improved upon in order to enhance and remain relevant to our daily lives.

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Bitcoin is rarely out of the news these days. There have been stories about Bitcoin thefts, its use by cybercriminals, the first Bitcoin ATM, and most recently the virtual currency’s value soared to over $900 after the FBI told a US Senate committee hearing that it offers "legitimate financial services".

If you’re a bitcoin miner or collector, and are wondering what to do with your stockpiled virtual currency, you’ll soon be able to add "buy a trip into space" to the list of possibilities.

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It's been a big day for Microsoft. The Xbox One hit store shelves and took over the daily tech news, overshadowing all competition, including that of it's own Nokia devices arm. While reviews, unboxing videos and a few tales of hard drive woes have highlighted the news, there were other announcements surrounding the console launch.

One such piece of news came from an unexpected source. Logitech, known for its cases, keyboards and mice, is also in possession of all-in-one remote company Harmony. The darling of the home theater crowd, or at least those who don't wish to pay for Crestron, has thrown its support behind the new gaming console.

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Take a look at your wallet. How many debit cards, credit cards and loyalty cards do you have? If it's anything like mine it is probably bursting at the seams with an inch or more of plastic cards. Reach the checkout in a store and you may well have ended up red-faced as you rummage for the right payment and loyalty card. With Coin, all of this could come to an end. The idea of a catch-all replacement that combines multiple cards into one is not new, but thus far solutions have taken the form of mobile apps. Coin is different -- this is a real card that acts as many.

Coins have a tendency to weigh down your pockets, but this Coin is a single lightweight unit. The card features an integrated display which you can use to view the last four digits of a stored card along with the expiration data and CVV so you, and the person you hand the card to, knows which of your stored cards you are using. You may well have used a mobile app that replaces loyalty cards, and Coin is taking this idea to the next level.

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There’s been a considerable buzz surrounding smart watches in the last few months but it seems that they won’t be featuring in many letters to Santa. According to technology research specialists Gartner, premium pricing combined with a vague idea of the benefits they can offer will lead to disappointing smart watch sales.

"Samsung and other well-known vendors have recently entered the smart watch space, yet the products we have seen so far have been rather uninspiring in terms of design, available apps and features," says Annette Zimmermann, principal research analyst at Gartner. "As a result, Gartner predicts that wearable devices will remain a companion to mobile phones at least through 2017, with less than one percent of premium phone users opting to replace their phone with a combination of a wearable device and a tablet".

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Smartphones and tablets are changing many aspects of our day-to-day lives, even the way we do our shopping. The latest Mobile Audience Insights report from mobile ad specialist JiWire is focused on the consumer packaged goods (CPG) market and how mobile devices are affecting our buying habits.

Among the key findings of the report are that 60 percent of consumers use their smartphone to create their shopping list and 65 percent add products to their list after seeing a mobile ad, 46 percent are willing to try a new product after seeing an ad. Also 69 percent would be happy to see their shopping experience enhanced by receiving information like discount coupons or recipes from the retailer on their mobile.

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Google Glass is still being tested by a limited number of lucky users, and Apple’s rumored smart watch remains ever elusive, but wearables is clearly one of the fastest growing areas in technology, so it’s inevitable that an exhibition would be set up to showcase it.

The Wearable Technology Show will be held on the 18th and 19th March 2014, at the Olympia Conference Centre in London, and include three dedicated conference rooms, over 70 sessions on fashion, sports and fitness, health, M2M, live product demos, a developer hackfest and a business startup track.

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It's an indication of the impact of social media that Twitter is now often the first place where people learn of major news stories. But that's a double-edged sword because it can be hard to know how accurate the information you're reading is.

From today Twitter is making it easier for government organizations and charities in the UK and Ireland to make timely and accurate information available via Twitter Alerts. The alerts service launched in the US, Japan and Korea in September of this year and has already been used by a number of public services to share information during emergencies involving public safety, bad weather and so on.

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To help fight the problem of child pornography online, Google and Microsoft are joining forces to block access to illegal content in the UK and then globally. Writing in the Daily Mail, Google's Eric Scmidt explains how new search filtering techniques now prevent more than 100,000 search terms relating to child pornography from returning any results. The filtering is starting in English speaking countries, but will soon roll out to more than 150 languages.

He explains that Google and Microsoft have worked with law enforcement agencies for many years and are proactively involved in the removal of illegal images. More than 200 extra employees have been assigned the tasks of developing new technologies over the last three months. This is very much a joint venture between the two companies, and Schmidt recognizes the input of Microsoft, saying that the company "deserves a lot of credit for developing and sharing its picture detection technology".

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If you’re looking for a new tablet, laptop, 2-in-1 device or all-in-one system you might want to take a look at Intel’s new Holiday Buying Guide. The chipmaker has put together a 20-page PDF brochure featuring products from the likes of ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, Sony, HP, and Samsung.

Divided into sections, starting with 2-in-1 Devices, the guide tells you a bit about that particular type of system, and then presents a selection of shiny new hardware vying for your attention (and hard earned cash) this holiday season.

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There is nothing wrong with Google scanning millions of book and making that text available as snippets in search results. This is the ruling made today by a judge in New York, bringing to an end an eight year legal battle between Google and The Authors Guild in conjunction with several specific authors. Starting back in 2004, Google has scanned more than twenty million books -- and permission was not obtained from the copyright holder in many cases.

A class action lawsuit was launched against Google back in 2005, but in New York, U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin has ruled that there is no copyright infringement and that Google's book scanning qualifies as fair use. Among the named writers were former New York Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton, The Trouble with Thirteen author Betty Miles, and legal author Joseph Goulden.

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Millennials are more heavily distracted when watching video and as a result adverts need to work harder to get through to them. This is among the findings of research by YuMe, a digital brand advertising specialist, and IPG Media Lab.

Focusing on millennials (those born between the early 1980s and the turn of the century) the first phase of the study looked at the tablet video viewing experience compared to TV, PC and mobile. The second phase analyzed media consumption and multi-tasking habits in an attempt to understand which device is most effective at achieving brand recall within the demographic.

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Twitter is about to get a whole lot more customizable and personal thanks to the introduction of custom timelines. This latest feature gives users the ability to control exactly what appears in their timeline -- a very interesting alternative to wading through thousands of tweets from the hundreds of accounts you follow. Custom timelines can be used in various ways and offer quick and easy methods of organizing related tweets into a single, manageable stream.

In a post on the Twitter developer blog, Brian Ellin reveals details of the new feature, explaining that:

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